


Hallowed Land

by champion_ariana



Category: Hallowed Land, Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27133307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/champion_ariana/pseuds/champion_ariana
Summary: A story of a teenage girl's journey after her parents are found missing. She has to move back to her mysterious hometown, the Hallowed Land, and there, many events happen that shape her destiny and the worlds...
Kudos: 4





	Hallowed Land

The day Lavinia Hendrickson and her older sister Beatrix came to the Hallowed Land, nothing would ever be the same for the town. Although the two girls had grown up in the town as young children, they had been sent off to their crazy aunt at a young age, who sent them to boarding school in Sweden, just to save herself the trouble of raising them as soon as possible. Them being sent away was for a completely unknown reason, and they had always speculated that their parents had been too lazy. 

But their parents had gone missing 3 months ago and nobody knew why or how. This was a cause so important for Beatrix (aged 18) and Lavinia (aged 15) to come back to their childhood home. This was, however, very different to how they had remembered it. In fact, they hadn't been in the secluded town for thirteen years straight. They were both very suspicious of it, but people of the town seemed welcoming and friendly to the sisters. It was like they had been set up, but they had decided to keep their thoughts to themselves until they entered their parents' old house. It was beautiful, and the garden was magnificent, luscious, and green, but it almost seemed fake, like something from a storybook. 

Lavinia clearly felt very uncomfortable with the situation and did not want to be there. She knew something was strange, but couldn’t tell exactly why.

This was answered the next afternoon however. The mayor came to their doorstep, and pulled out two large books- 798 pages each, According to the mayor, that was the town rulebook and stated all of the rules were punishable by either one week, one month, one year, or one lifetime in the dungeon. Beatrix and Lavinia had to quite literally, memorise it, before this time next week. That would have been fine, but the mayor insisted on testing them on the rulebook. That, Beatrix decided, was what made a terrible mayor. Of course, the two sisters were annoyed at the mayor.

Rule 1- You must obey the Ten Commandments at all times.

"What are those?" Lavinia asked, with a slight tinge of embarrassment, her cheeks going red.

Bea stated that in medieval times, if you did not know the Ten Commandments, you were considered a witch and burnt at the stake, but awkwardly moved on. Lavinia, after having whipped out her phone and used Google to figure it out, interrupted, declaring "I bet that’s only because they were too lazy to write out all the Commandments individually! And does not worshipping other gods in context mean the actual Gods or other political leaders? Its probably the latter by all accounts. I mean, what ridiculous bull-"

Lavinia was abruptly stopped by Beatrix. 

"So Bea, you believe in that as well?" Lavinia asked, holding back the urge to slap her sister.

"Well, Rule 2 is don’t disagree with or question the validity of the town rules."

"Seriously?"

Yes. We should make an effort to stay out of trouble, Lavinia. Although that might be a bit hard for you."

"But who said we have to follow the rules?"

"The mayor, Lavinia. The leader of this town," Bea remarked sarcastically.

"I KNOW WHAT A MAYOR IS!"

Lavinia locked herself in her room and had a couple of realisations. One, the Hallowed Land had awful Wi-Fi. So no internet connection here, and she wouldn’t be able to contact any of her friends from boarding school. She also realised that she would have to go to school. That had pretty much came as a given in her life before, but considering the rather, well, backwards, rules of the town she wondered whether the school system would be just the same and wondered if it was even worth learning.

Of course, because it was a Sunday, the town forbid pretty much doing anything that day to keep it "Holy". So Lavinia and Bea just tried to memorise the rules after Lavinia was forced to swallow her pride and apologise. 

Rule 25- You must not be in possession of more than four cats.

Rule 26- Do not leave your house from 9pm to 5am if you do not want to go missing and never return.

Bea was in shambles. Lavinia just looked at the rulebook and grimaced.

The day slowly passed, and nothing happened. It was like time was frozen, replaying and replaying until all 798 pages were read.

"Ok, Lavinia, what is rule 3562?"

"Cats can only be white, brown or hazel coloured since grey and black are bad fortune?"

"Nope", Bea said. "That's 3564. 3562 is to not be associated with devils and sinners."

"Wow, devils and sinners are two quite different things…"

"Remember rule two?"

"Yup. Sorry."

At 9pm that night however, a thick mist covered the town. Apparently, this happened every night, but if you went out into it, you went missing. Town rules, because the town didn’t want their reputation to be ruined by people going missing constantly. Rule 26, if you remember. The first thing Lavinia thought of was whether the mist had something to do with her parents' disappearance but thought her parents would be smart enough to follow the rules.

And it was forbidden for a reason, as the mist was so thick that it would be pretty easy to get lost in it, well at least some of the rules had common sense, mixed in all of the overbearing religious laws and spiritual cat problems. It looked so thick that you would choke if you happened to cross paths with it. Even the thought of it forced Bea to close all of the blinds and lock the doors.

"Lavinia! If you dare even go outside I am going to kill you!'

Lavinia was obviously trying pretty hard to get her phone to work, and subsequently throwing it against her bed, but Bea still looked pretty angry for some reason. The memorisation process of a 798 page long town rulebook really did take its toll on one's mental health. This had to be memorised eventually, and this frustrated Bea a lot. Lavinia could not care less about the rules, and pretty much had only tried to memorise the cat related ones, simply because she found them funny. It was very hard to sleep that night, especially considering the imminent chance of going missing and never returning.

\---

At this point, as the reader, you are probably wondering, how exactly does the school system work within the Hallowed Land? Despite her arrogance and desperation in this particular situation, Lavinia was a good student and was a very intelligent. The next morning, at Hallowed Land High School, Lavinia was given a tour of the school by a boy in her grade. I almost know what you are thinking. High school romance. But Lavinia wasn’t exactly fond of boys, especially those who were desperate for a girlfriend.

However, this boy was different. Lavinia liked his attitude towards the town rules, but still did not show any sign of a crush. Harley, as he would later reveal himself as, did not enjoy the cat laws, as a person who had moved into the Hallowed Land with five cats, with the mayor clearly having a problem with that and creating a new law. He was forced to give a cat to the neighbour, who their family despised. Lavinia, however, pretty much had a problem with all of the laws. It was nice to know another person who had experienced the outside world for Lavinia. Together, they walked around the school, and discussed the town's politics. (Which was a very interesting subject.)

"So," Lavinia asked, "How is a mayor chosen?"

"Well, the previous mayor gets to choose two successors. The town vote on the better one." Harley responded, sarcastically but with a small grin. He continued, saying that it was unfair that the previous mayor got a say, and the only way to kick out a current mayor is for them to resign, or, well, die. 

After this, they moved back to their classroom, and sat down next to each other, in a very unromantic way, since he was the only person Lavinia even knew. The teacher insisted on Lavinia standing up and introducing herself, and was almost wishing that the roof suddenly caved in. Of course, if speaking your mind wasn’t practically against the law, Lavinia would have said something like," Hi, I'm Lavinia, and I didn’t want to be here. I also think your laws are stupid." But considering the amount of first impressions that could be made from this one speech, Lavinia knew better than that. Instead she said, "Hi, my name is Lavinia. I lived here when I was really little, but I was sent to my aunt by my parents, who sent me to Sweden to attend boarding school. Now I'm back so yeah, nothing really to see here. Of course, her opening speech didn’t tell the whole truth, but prevented lying, because she was pretty sure she remembered from yesterday that lying is against the law. 

Starting at the school in the middle of the year was rather stupid, but it's not as if Lavinia had a choice, with the thought of her missing parents, who she couldn’t even remember, looming over her. She didn’t really pay attention in the first lesson and was busy staring at the large amount of flies also sharing a room with her class. Lavinia already knew the majority of what they were doing in the English class, and found the flies more entertaining. Lavinia was smart, and she sure knew it.

The day clearly got no more interesting until lunch time. Lavinia and Harley sat by themselves, on Harley's request. Harley had something he wanted to ask Lavinia, and it had clearly been pressing him. He stated that everyone at the school had to join a lunchtime club if they wanted extra credit. 

"So, Lavinia, do you want to join my club?"

"What is it all about though?" Lavinia asked, wondering what someone like Harley would be in to.

"Well, I don’t have any members yet, but it would be an absolute honour if you were the first. We can decide that then."

Lavinia thought for a while about what to do, but later agreed to it for the enjoyment of just hanging around and chatting, and the potential extra points onto your grade average, which, unfortunately, Lavinia didn’t necessarily need, but could be potentially good in case of disaster. Harley was very happy that someone finally took him up on his request.

Everyone, by that point had already wanted to go home from school, and Lavinia was no different. After walking home, Bea, who had graduated last year, asked Lavinia if she had made any friends, and to her surprise, Lavinia had. Lavinia described Harley as very nice, and had offered for her to join his club. But, the club did not have any members except for Harley and Lavinia themselves, and there was not much they could do in their current state. Bea suggested finding some people, but Lavinia shrugged it off and said it was okay the way it was. However, the thought of finding more people lingered within Lavinia and kind of made her uncomfortable, but thrilled at the same time. The days at school did not get any better, and though marginally, Lavinia enjoyed staring at flies more. This was until Harley and Lavinia's club had their first meeting.

Of course, they just talked for half an hour or so about ideas, but nothing came up. Harley said that he had a few friends that may consider joining and Lavinia was very happy about that, considering that three days ago, Harley was on his own. 

"Hey," Lavinia suggested, proudly. "Maybe, we could create a club that criticises the town rules, and make petitions to change them!"

Harley was even taken aback by this suggestion, even as a person who had probably seen a lot. Lavinia just sat there and smirked. 

\---

"Lavinia, I disagree with the town rules, but creating a club to specifically criticise them? That could get us dungeon-ed for a lifetime!" screamed Harley

"Well, do you believe in justice?" Lavinia remarked, shocking Harley again with her outspoken personality. 

This ignited a sense of confidence in Harley. "So, how are we going to do this?"

"Simple," Lavinia responded. "Tear down their system piece by piece. Break all of the rules. The revolution has begun. Yup. But we also must find my parents. I haven't told anyone yet, but the real reason I returned to the Hallowed Land is because three months ago, they went missing. "

"Then, we can do it at the same time! We need more people, though. It will be hard work but it will be worth it, for the town and your parents. We will need say, seven or eight people?"

"So five or six more."

"Yup."

"I'll be surprised if we can find even five more sane people in this school."

"Well, you found me, so that's something!"

The two sat for the rest of the lunch break and discussed potential candidates for their club. They decided eight was a bit of a stretch, so they settled on five others to join them. Nobody at the time even seemed slightly plausible. But some people had come up that piqued Lavinia's interest, and the next day promised to talk to all of them.

That night, when the mist covered the town and everybody stayed inside, Lavinia lay in bed, wondering what the next day would hold, meeting the other five potential members that could be perfect for the club, disasters, or both at the same time. 

\---

Unfortunately for Lavinia and Harley, their attempts to make contact with the other five potential takers were immediately stopped by teachers, as they did it during classes. As they were sitting at the back of the classroom, nobody was really paying attention to what they were doing, and talked about how they would communicate with the others without causing a riot or being excruciatingly awkward. They decided to leave notes in their lockers, saying "Meet me at the courtyard at Lunch. We have important matters to discuss." Lavinia barely knew anything about Harley's potential people, and Harley did not go to an effort to describe their personalities. 

However, this tinge of hope felt after Lavinia and Harley had left the notes was absolutely crushed, as the first assignment of the term was given, moans ricocheting off the walls from the class. 

"The assignment," The teacher said, "Is to prove why the religious values of the town are important for keeping law and order, and present a 5 minute speech on this topic."

Lavinia already knew exactly what she was going to say, and scribbled down furiously on a scrap piece of paper. Harley stared at the teacher blankly. Lavinia offered to help, although she knew Harley was smart enough to do it on his own. It was because of the topic, and this clearly made Harley extremely uncomfortable talking about. Perhaps, Lavinia wondered, if Harley had been in a similar position at one point, and disagreed with all of the rules? Or perhaps he was a bit nervous to talk about a topic he did not like?

"You will present the speeches in exactly one week."

This was clearly news to the class. One week was not a lot of time.

Harley turned a strange shade of green. Lavinia did not and continued writing the speech. 

\---

The day just dragged on until Lavinia and Harley met in the courtyard at lunch with five others. Lavinia seemed very surprised that the notes actually worked and they had listened. Harley then told everyone to follow him, and they had ended up in a carpark underneath the school. Harley then introduced Lavinia to the other five.

"Ok! So what the heck are we doing here! I think there are rats!" One of them squealed.

"Kat," Harley responded, dodging the first question, "Its fine, and there are no rats."

"Lavinia, this is Katalina. She's in the grade above us."

Lavinia and Kat shook hands but of course, Kat seemed reluctant, looking up at Lavinia despite being older. 

"This one is a dangerously unstable individual, Lavinia. This particular person tried to set off a fire last year in the school so he wouldn’t have to do an exam. Of course it didn’t work. I think you would like him a lot, Lavinia. This is Damian. In our year." Harley remarked, with a tinge of sarcasm.

Damian and Lavinia did one of those secret handshakes, which was surprisingly well coordinated considering they had just met. 

"Just to let you know, Harley, I've always wanted to do something like this. Thanks. And Lavinia, like Harley and you, I'm not from the Hallowed Land. I moved because my parents died in an car accident and I had nowhere to go. The town practically kidnapped me because they wanted to look charitable, to please God or something and for literally no other reason. I heard them talking about it, and I'd almost rather just live with my brother." 

Damian continued this rant much to Kat's annoyance, and Lavinia didn’t look too pleased either. Harley attempted to make peace as Lavinia began to make contact with the other three people who Harley had selected. The first was a small, young girl who couldn’t have been more than 13 years old, and she introduced herself as "Nancy, the greatest of all these suckers." Next to Nancy, was another girl, Briana, who looked younger than Lavinia, around 13 or 14, who slapped Nancy, saying that she was better and clearly, not a sucker. And finally, Adrien, in the year directly below Lavinia, who was complaining about schoolwork and was also wondering what kind of club meets in an off-limits carpark under the school and wondered what the hell Harley would possibly be doing.

Lavinia felt her feet moving towards the centre of all of the commotion, yelling to the others to shut up, leading to her message being echoed across the dank, dirty carpark. 

"We are not here to fight!" she shouted, causing Harley, Kat, Damian, Nancy, Briana and Adrien to shut their pie-holes. "We have a common reason to be here. We want justice for everyone in this town and I want to find my parents, and you probably have your own goals but we'll talk about that later! But we need a team name, motto, an ELECTED leader and all of that jazz! Any suggestions will be taken. Thank you."

Everyone went quiet. Harley started, saying "I elect Lavinia for group leader." Everyone else seemed to agree with him, causing both shock and delight for Lavinia herself. Trying to think of a name was much, much harder for the group.

Nancy had some… interesting ideas, like The Elite Force and Wolf Pack. Kat's were even weirder, as she wanted to name the group the Assassinators, among many other names among the same calibre. Lavinia was completely weirded out, and then asked Harley how many members there were, to help think of names. Harley responded, saying there were seven. 

"Ok," Lavinia said, "How can we do that in our name? Pretty good number, if you ask me."

"Yeah, there are seven days in a week, seven colours of the rainbow, seven seas and seven continents," Adrien added, holding out his phone, yawning.

"But that is so stupid!" joked Damian. "We need to step up our game if we want to get anyone to actually notice us!" 

Kat, Lavinia and Briana were brainstorming ideas, all while the others were making up a team song.

"We are the dangerousest people on the block!  
We aren't gonna get the chop!"

Kat was already complaining about the lack of spelling and grammar ability, and Briana was wondering why anyone would be "getting the chop". Lavinia was lost for thought completely, zoned out of the world around her completely as she thought. 

Briana, however had a few ideas. "How about our name reflects what we do, criticise the rules, and besides, the seven thing isn't a huge deal. Unless we could combine the two?"

Lavinia's face twisted into a smirk. Rule 74 is don’t do the seven deadly sins, correct? 

"Rule 75, Lavinia. But yes, and what are you getting at?" answered Harley.

"Welcome, Briana, Kat, Adrien, Damian, Nancy, and Harley. We are the seven deadly sins."

\---

"Well, well, well," said Damian. "This name is way better than I thought it would be." Everybody had agreed with Damian, and Lavinia had got out her pen and began to create a list. She didn’t even give it a second thought, and did not have to think at all to create it.

Pride- Nancy  
Greed- Harley  
Lust- Kat  
Envy- Briana  
Gluttony- Lavinia (me)  
Wrath- Damian  
Sloth- Adrien

Showing the list to the other newly initiated sins, Lavinia asked if anyone had a problem with it, and Lavinia refused to give any explanation for her own. Nobody would speak out against her anyway so it made it much easier to assign. Finally, following the procedure, the motto was:

"We are the dangerousest people on the block!  
We aren't gonna get the chop!"

The sins chanted that, but so out of time that you would barely be able to make out what the hell they were even going on about. Lavinia then dismissed everyone as they walked out of the dark carpark, planning to meet in the same place tomorrow. Lavinia, Harley and Damian walked to the library together, and were discussing why Damian tried to set the school on fire, and he responded with that all students get a passing grade if the school burns down during and exam, but then stated that he got caught in the process and was suspended, and had to beg to not be expelled. Lavinia took some notes, drawing a horrified look from both Harley and Damian. Lavinia just responded with, "I want to know everything. And life is finite, but I want to gain all of the knowledge in the world." Of course, the other two were absolutely horrified at Lavinia's, well, abnormality. Nobody had picked up on this before, not even her sister.

Grade 10 had a free period, so they stayed in the library as Lavinia helped Damian and Harley write their speeches (to prove why the religious values of the town are important for keeping law and order), and Harley wrote his on the consumerism of society (ironic), Damian did it about not being wrathful (and this is not even a joke), and Lavinia's was quite literally, opposing the topic. As Lavinia read her rather disturbing speech out, on the section of how the mayor constantly is breaking the Ten Commandments, with supporting examples from Harley.

\---

Lavinia could not take any more criticism from random people she had never met in the library. Damian was also practicing his hypocritical speech, drawing too much attention to them while Harley was staring at flies. Flies. Let's just say that anyone could have made a better effort than Harley on this speech. He told the others that he was just going to wing it, and nobody really cared that much knowing Harley was smart enough to make it on the day, which is what Damian said he always had done and still attained a grade average of 85 percent.

Yet again, saved by the bell. Lavinia walked home in the exact opposite direction of her new friends Harley and Damian, only by chance, nothing more. Each step towards her home where she lived with her older sister felt unnatural, almost as she knew something had happened that would force this horrendous feeling. An uneasy feeling rocked her stomach, forcing her to let down her guard and sit on the sidewalk from the nausea. She felt her insides rocking out, and out of extreme pain and anguish, threw up into a beautiful purple flower bush along the sidewalk, before passing out from the extreme pain.


End file.
